James Gosling

James Gosling is a Canadian computer scientist best known for inventing the Java programming language and virtual machine. Initially named “Oak” after a tree outside his office at Sun Microsystems, Java today has multiple open source distributions including OpenJDK and Amazon Corretto. In addition to his work on Java, Gosling also developed software for the Unix operating system including the shar utility which was used to bundle software programs and files together into a self extracting archive. Widely recognized for his contributions to the field of computer science, Gosling was also named an Officer of the Order of Canada — the country’s highest civilian honor.